Nor did they know that Congress would pass an expensive prescription drug benefit for Medicare, one whose costs turn out to have been substantially underestimated.

Some scientists believe that the risk of passive smoking, in particular the risk of developing coronary heart diseases, may have been substantially underestimated.

"Because of the way the vice president operates, in a rather low-profile way, I think his influence oftentimes is substantially underestimated," said Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho.

However, the costs turned out to be substantially underestimated and in July 2005 Shell revised the estimate upwards to $20 billion.

If correct, this may imply that population estimates using the beginning of the mission period as a baseline have substantially underestimated the state's pre-Columbian population.

For this reason, it has been suggested that the health impact of contamination by alpha emitters might have been substantially underestimated.

A1 MISTAKES IN JOBLESS RATE The Government said it had substantially underestimated unemployment for at least a decade, particularly among women, because of bias in its monthly survey.

Soviet Kurds numbered 152,952 according to the 1989 census, although this figure was believed to be substantially underestimated.

Edwin Sutherland's famous pioneering work in 1940 produced evidence that white-collar crime might be substantially underestimated in official criminal statistics.

Ames (1934) gave a figure of 41,276 for the 1920s, but this is likely to have been substantially underestimated.